By Elianna Mintz, ICB Reporter 
Imagine a situation in which right and left wing campus groups throw aside their differences to promote a common cause. They believe the importance of the message they want to impart is bigger than each individual group, so they check their personal agendas at the door to make the greatest impact on the student body.
[For more information regarding how pro-Israel groups work together, see the recently published article discussing UC Berkeley and J Street U].
This might seem unlikely, but it's a reality at the University of Maryland (UMD.)
The large, diverse Jewish population at UMD supports five pro-Israel groups that cover the spectrum of right- left- and center-leaning groups to address different views on Israel.
Despite their political differences --and there definitely are differences -- they regularly cosponsor events and convey a united Israel advocacy message to the UMD community.
“All groups work well together so we can educate the campus about Israel in a productive and progressive way in which no one is left on the side,” co-president of J-Street U Molly Bernstein told
ICB.
“There are definitely events where opinions differ among the groups,” former ShaZAM president (which was then called ZOA) and current Jewish Student Union Israel chair Daniel Berdugo said, “so those events aren’t cosponsored. Overarchingly, however, the students are accommodating and respectful.”
“As a whole we insist on a just, two-state solution and we want to reflect those values in our own campus relationships,” Bernstein added.
The five groups at UMD include:
• Terpac Students for Israel (TSI)– Focuses on Israeli culture and does not engage in political discourse
• J-Street U – Left-leaning group defines itself as a “pro-peace and pro-Israel voice on campus"
• Shalom Zionists at Maryland (ShaZAM) - Right-leaning, politically active group
• Jewish Student Union (JSU) – Facilitates Israel programming as part of its broader agenda
• Terrapin Students for Israel
The groups work in “harmony” with one another according to Carly Davis, a David Project campus fellow at UMD, and cosponsor many events, most notably Israel Week.
“For the purpose of Israel Week,” Berdugo told
ICB, “we disregard conflict and celebrate all that is good with Israel, such as its culture and education.”
But there’s a secret to their success. Bernstein and Berdugo note that the presidents and boards of each group are friends with one another because they all participate in a Hillel Leadership Retreat that enables them to bond over shared values and work to foster a positive campus environment, regardless of political views.
"Because everyone is brought together on the retreat, the Hillel leaders begin to care about each other on a more personal level, which affects their interactions with one another in campus politics," Bernstein explained.
"One of the greatest things about Maryland is that it doesn’t stop at Israel groups," Berdugo added. "We are all friends even when we have different points of view about Israel. Even if an Israel group puts on an event that I don’t agree with, I can still be best friends with the president of the group. It's easy to work with friends and this is why Maryland succeeds.
"At the end of day," he said, "we understand that the main point is to have a meaningful and educational year of programming about Israel, regardless of our particular political views."
While many campuses don't even have one group that focuses solely on promoting Israel, quite a few schools around the country have multiple Israel groups. When they learn to work together, the results can be significant.
Rutgers University has a similar success story. While the campus does not have a left-leaning pro-Israel group, there are multiple centrist and right-leaning pro-Israel groups with different agendas that still manage to work together.
Their secret to success is very similar to UMD’s: Members of all of the pro–Israel groups come together to discuss their shared goals, but they do not limit their meeting to a one-time retreat.
Liran Kapoano, who attended Rutgers and now works for JerusalemOnlineU.com, explained that Rutgers has an Israel Committee that facilitates weekly meetings between all of the pro-Israel groups on campus.
"As a pro-Israel activist, it's so important to be in sync with the other organizations on campus to share ideas and work together so that you aren't duplicating efforts on identical programs," Kapoano said. "You can also share resources with each other - be it your time or your money, both precious, limited commodities for any college student."
The advantages of harmonious cooperation seem clear to those who work to achieve it, but many students at large schools with multiple Israel-focused groups face different realities. UC Berkeley is a case in point. The California school has two large Israel groups -- Kesher Enoshi, which (KE) focuses on bringing social change to Israel, and Tikvah Students for Israel (Tikvah), which stresses Zionism and strong Israel advocacy on campus --and two smaller groups, Bears for Israel and Israel Action Committee (IAC.)
While both KE and Tikvah cosponsor events with the smaller Israel groups, their different views on Israel inhibit their ability to work with each other.
"We don't work with Tikvah," KE co-head coordinator Roi Bachmutsky told
ICB in a phone interview, "because they're not interested in engaging with us. We are a group of social change and will point out Israel’s faults at times, which Tikvah does not appreciate.
“There is always tension in Jewish Student Union (JSU) meetings when Israel is mentioned because of the conflict between our two groups,” Bachmutsky continued. “Once JSU wanted to arrange an Israel Unity Shabbat in which all four Israel groups on campus cooked together and spent time with one another. Tikvah, however, was not interested in working with us.”
Tikvah co-president Jacob Lewis confirmed that his group does not work with KE. By working with organizations like Breaking the Silence, a group of Israeli army veterans who discusses traumatic events they have experienced during war time, and inviting activists from the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement who fight for Palestinian rights to homes while calling East Jerusalem occupied, they “undermine Tikvah’s advocacy work,” Lewis said. KE has staked out a niche that does not mesh with Tikvah's goals. Recent KE events have featured a discussion with LGBTQ activists from the Aguda and a large event engaging with the J14 Social Justice protests after a week of raising awareness in a protest tent in Hillel.
“As long as leaders in the organization use the group’s position in the Jewish community to legitimize attacks on Israel before the campus at large, there is no way Tikvah can in any way work with, assist or support the activities of Kesher Enoshi,” Lewis told ICB.
“We don’t mind that they are critical of Israel,” Lewis added. “We only mind when they demonize Israel in an unfair context to the extent that students attending the event don’t understand enough to analyze Israel for themselves.”
Rabbi Adam Naftalin-Kellman, executive director of Berkeley Hillel, firmly believes that KE and Tikvah should learn to work together despite their differences.
“It is always great to have communal groups work together,” Naftalin-Kellman told
ICB. “We should all be working together because at the end of the day we all have a common cause that we are working towards.”
Maybe KE and Tikvah will find a way to work together, maybe they won’t. While the collaborative model works well at some schools and suits some climates, it may not yield the best results in every setting. The example set by student leaders at UMD and Rutgers -- based on forging relationships that go beyond specific group leadership roles -- offers a recipe for success at other schools with multiple Israel-focused student groups. But maybe Tikvah and KE respectively send an equally strong message about Israel to the student body by maintaining their independent approaches.
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